Artist, illustrator and maker, Kate Polley

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Created in 2015, Waves is an artists book inspired by the long distance relationship between my grandparents when my grandad was in the Navy. My grandad kept every letter my nana wrote him, she found them after he died.

These are a series of illustrations I created in 2015, to accompany a short fairytale I had written about selkies. Selkies are a creature common in Scottish folklore, a kind of fairy that takes the form of a seal but likes to come ashore and shed her skin and dance, in the form of a beautiful woman.

Thank you to everyone who came and supported us at the degree show, we’ve worked so hard and it was great to see everybody enjoy an amazing opening night, with some fantastic work on show! Thank you also for the lovely comments and feedback I recieved!

On May 14th the world again celebrated International Dylan Thomas Day!

Under Milk Wood is one of my most favourite stories in the world; beautifully written, it tells of the lives of many different characters living in a small Welsh village.

I have recently completed this Illustrated Guide to Llareggub, which, when folded, displays panels illustrating scenes from the play, and when opened reveals a map of the town. Through careful analysis of the text I was able to extract clues about where characters lived, and piece together an accurate map!

This project began as a sketchbook diarising the many intriguing questions my father won’t answer. Seeing how comically outrageous people found the questions, encouraged me to expand and develop the sketches into a zine. All of the questions and scenarios described in the zine are real and true, but is my father really a spy? We may never really know.

Three colour risoprint.

Copies of this zine will be available to purchase at the DJCAD 2017 Degree Show, which runs from the 19th to the 28th of May. Come on down and have a look, we are proudly Scotland’s number #1 art school, and there is some fantastic work on show this year!

Instead of a typical self portrait, focusing on physical likeness, I set out to create a self portrait that would reveal more about my personality and identity. I explored different ways to do this, and found I was able to represent these more abstract ideas using the visual metaphor of a map.

I had the idea to deconstruct and object, and reconstruct it in a completely different way. I went on to create a series of miniature theatre shows inside matchboxes, made using the original materials provided by the matchbox. The three pictured below are ‘An Evening at the Ballet’, ‘An Evening at the Circus’, and ‘An Evening of Magic.’ By winding the matchbox, using the matches, the theatre presents it’s show.

Divination has been practiced in many forms across cultures, since ancient times. Tarot cards remain a popular choice for many, despite there being no evidence to support their reliability. This got me thinking, and I was inspired to create my own deck of fortune telling cards that are wholly unreliable, and silly. Having reflected on why we might turn to tarot cards, the big questions we ask them, and what we hope they will reveal to us, I decided I wanted to create a deck that would be… disappointing.

Mme. Katherine’s Nonsense Tarot Deck contains forty cards, which are divided into the four following suits – lost things, living things, hidden things, and small things. It comes complete with instructions on how to perform a reading, and a guide to interpreting each of the cards. The deck comes packaged in a silky pouch; providing spiritual protection.

A random example, to give you an idea of what things the deck contains: the card ‘Finger’ (belonging to the suit of lost things) is associated with – a bad lunch, a visit to a zoo, waiting rooms, and despising one’s family.

Earlier this year I challenged myself to draw, from memory, the faces of friends and loved ones that are no longer around. I aimed to capture those elusive memories, that always seemed to slip away before they came into focus. I brought the sketches together in a concertina book, titled ‘Portraits from Memories.’